25th Annual Athens Triathlon - TriathlonMini Sprint

I seeded myself way too low. I really didn't know how fast I would be because I hadn't swum one length this year prior to the seeding. I think I put in a 5:10 as a seed time, which placed me in 108th starting position. I did it in 4:40 which was the 33rd fastest time of the day. I really loafed it though, and passed about 6 or 7 people. I probably could have gone close to 4 minutes flat with a little swimming training and a better seed.

My transitions were both pretty poor in terms of time. I've focused completely on run fitness this off season, and haven't done any work on transition. This tri was tantamount to an equipment check, and several things worked poorly. That said, I didn't forget anything, and I didn't do anything stupid that left me uncomfortable.

needed different bike shoes. I have awesome roady shoes, but they suck for transition. These are now purchased - I just need time to practice with them.

I love my bike. This is the first tri on the new Kuota, and it's the first triathlon with the new zipp 808's w/ powertap. The whole setup was fast and felt great.
This bike leg was pretty satisfying for me. I'm big - 210 lbs - and I was smoking people who started WAY before me. I turned in the 17th fastest bike leg for the day, which is a very solid performance considering all I've really been doing is running.
21.4 mph is kinda slow, but the course was somewhat hilly and I'm out of cycling specific shape.

I knew this was a sprint, so I pushed my heart rate a little hard. I need to average around 140 bpm for the half iron, or i'll die on the run.
My Garmin watch was a liability - I need more practice switching sports with that thing on.

My fingers would not work properly to tie my shoes. It wasn't nerves - I think it was just from the hard effort on the bike.
I did a half-hearted attempt to get out of my shoes while on the bike - I got one foot out.... so I had a funny run to the bike rack with one shoe on and one off (click / slap / click / slap...) I also just carried my bike in the air, because one shoe was clipped in. Really need to figure this routine out and practice.

I gave up a minute in each transition to the fast guys. That's a total of 2 minutes

For me, this was a truly breakthrough run. Every time I do a tri, I do well on the swim and bike only to watch people blast past me on the run. Not so on this course - I think only 2 people passed me on the run, and they were both folks I had passed long before on the bike.



Damn shoe strings. My fingers didn't work for tying my shoes, so they came untied about 300 yards into the run. I figure I gave up maybe 20 seconds retying them. I now have the elastic laces, so this should be a non-issue now.

walked around.


In order: Transitions, Cycling fitness, swim seed placement. If we leave fitness out of the equation, I think there was about 3:00 I left on the table. That would have moved me 12 slots up overall, which is huge.


I won the younger half of the Clydesdale division by about 15 minutes. The guy who won the 40+ Clydesdales went 1:09:39, so I was the fastest Clydesdale overall. I think this will probably be one of the last races I do as a clyde, as I'm teetering around 200lbs right now.